Drunk patients, escorts drain dollars from health board

SEAN McKIBBON
Nunatsiaq News

IQALUIT — The Baffin Regional Health and Social Services Board has been forced to hire a security guard to protect the Ottawa-based Rotel patient residence from drunken patients and patient escorts.

At a health board meeting in Iqaluit this week, board chair Dennis Patterson said rowdy and drunken behavour by Baffin patients has caused Ottawa medical appointments to be postponed and patient travel costs to be increased.

Despite clearly posted signs in both English and Inuktitut banning people from drinking inside Rotel, Patterson said a number of patients and their escorts have brought alcohol into their rooms, then gotten drunk and become rowdy.

“And that’s lead to actual calls to the police and people getting arrested,” Patterson said.

It’s also lead to patients missing their appointments and having to be sent back to the Baffin to await even more trips to the South for more appointments. It’s an extra cost the health board can ill afford, Patterson said.

“The staff at Rotel have said, ‘look we can’t handle this,’ and told us we have to hire a security guard,” Patterson said. He was quick to point out that not all patients are doing this, but he said there had been 13 incidents since June.

While the health board can ban escorts who cause problems, there is little that can be done about patients who break the rules, Patterson said.

There were problems with patients and alcohol at the old patient home in Montreal, Patterson said, but there were never so many. He could only guess at the reasons for the rowdiness in Ottawa.

“The Baffin home [in Montreal] provided more of a family atmosphere. It was suggested that maybe that was the reason. Certainly you never would have been able to get away with drinking in your room. The Rotel gives people more individual freedom, and unfortunately this has allowed people to misbehave,” Patterson said.

Patterson also thought the problem might be related to a huge increase in emergency medical evacuations this year.

At this time last year there had only been four medevacs. This year, there have been more than 25, Patterson said.

At about $25,000 each, those medevacs have increased the board’s costs considerably and increased the patient population in Ottawa.

He speculated that the increased number of patients might have lead to more incidents with alcohol, but Patterson couldn’t say for sure.